Margaret Davidson, Director, NOAA Coastal Services Center
Margaret Davidson has devoted her career to the goal of ensuring that public science serves public needs and values. Director of NOAA’s Coastal Services Center since 1996, Davidson has maintained a singular focus on generating and providing useable products and services for nongovernmental, local, state and national coastal managers facing a range of challenges from hazards to ecosystem protection to beach nourishment. The key to Davidson’s approach, and the Center’s success, has been her recognition that client needs must drive institutional priorities. Continual work with users at the local and regional levels has ensured that the Center stays in touch with user priorities as they evolve, and has made the Center a national model for linking science and technology to decision making. Before coming to NOAA, Davidson served as executive director of the South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium. She began her coastal career as an assistant attorney general and special counsel for the Louisiana Department of Justice. Davidson holds a Master of Marine Affairs degree from the University of Rhode Island and a J.D. in natural resource law from Louisiana State University.